Piaget
Believed that children pass through four stages of learning.
- sensorimotor
- pre operational
- Concrete opoerational
- Formal operational
Sensorimotor - birth to 2 years
Infants learn about their environment and develop early schemas by using all their senses to physically explore the world
Pre operational - 2 to 7 years
Children begin to control their environment by using symbolic behaviour, including representational words and drawings and pretend play, but are not yet able to think logically
Concrete operational - 7 to 11 years
Children use practical resources to help them to understand the world, such as counters for mathematics. They classify, categorise and use logic to understand things they see
Formal operational - 11 to 18 years
Young people have the ability for abstract thoughts. Rational thought and problem solving
Piaget constructivist theory
- children are active learners
- Children think differently from adults
- children construct their own meanings from their experiences and the environment around them
- language depends on the development of thought - cognition before language
Application
- Provide activities that reflect children’s stage of cognitive development
- plan opportunities for exploratory play to enable children to develop their thoughts, which will lead to language development
